29 Students Awarded Start Scholarships This Year

1. At the 5th Singapore Teaching and Academic Research Talent Scheme (START) Award Ceremony this year, 29 Singaporeans keen on pursuing academic careers at our Autonomous Universities (AUs) received their scholarships from Second Minister for Education, Ms Indranee Rajah. This includes the first batch of 14 Singaporean academics from National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) who were awarded the Inauguration Grant, which was announced earlier this month.

2. Details of the various START schemes and the list of scholarship recipients are in the Annex.

3. At the award ceremony, Ms Indranee Rajah emphasised the key role of START: “Through START, we are strengthening the pool of Singaporean academic talent at our universities in both research and teaching. We also hope that as we strengthen this talent pool, we would be able to maintain and cultivate a strong pipeline of Singaporean leaders to lead our universities.”

4. On the support provided by the START scholarships, START Overseas PhD Scholarship Alumnus, Assistant Professor Kenny Chng, said, “START offered a very valuable entry point into academia by sponsoring my postgraduate studies and providing a structured introduction to academic work”. He now teaches Constitutional & Administrative Law, and Legal Theory & Philosophy at SMU after completing his postgraduate studies at Harvard Law School.

5. START Early Career Award Alumnus, Assistant Professor Eliza Fong, who is a faculty member in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at NUS, said, “START provided me with the means to kick-start my own research programme.” Dr Fong leads her research team in the Translational Tumour Engineering Laboratory, focusing on engineering conditions to grow copies of tumours outside the patient for personalised drug testing.